Green Building Studio API Part I

Who is this for: Architects, engineers, vendors and developers involved with building energy analysis who have software development skills.

Takeaway: Announcing GBS API pilot ADN program. Describe what GBS API is and what it can do for you. A typical or manual building performance analysis workflow to solve a real world problem usually will take days if not weeks to complete. The GBS API will enable you to automate the process and significantly reduce the time required to get to a final design. There will be a follow up post in a few days to provide an example to solve a real world building performance analysis problem using GBS API.

Author: Barry Tsai - Software Development Manager, BPA, Autodesk, Inc.

Barry works for Autodesk as the software development manager in the Building Performance Analysis (BPA) group. He holds a Master of Science degree in engineering from U.C. Berkley. Barry has a background in software development for both desktop and cloud-based solutions and he is a certified Microsoft System Engineer and Developer.

Article:

Autodesk® Green Building Studio® (GBS) is a cloud-based energy analysis web service that can help architects and designers perform whole building performance analyses. GBS is used to improve the design by optimizing energy and water usage and getting to a carbon neutral design. The energy analysis is conducted using DOE-2.2, the same engine as eQuest. The Solar Insolation analysis has been validated by the US DOE’s NREL. You can learn more about GBS at http://www.autodesk.com/greenbuildingstudio.

A typical building performance analysis workflow includes the following steps:

• Model: A Building Information Model (BIM) design model first needs to be created to capture the building geometry, location, and a few other building energy related characteristics of the model. Autodesk Revit and Vasari are both great tools for model creation.
• Simulate: Both Revit and Vasari have native support to convert a BIM model to a gbxml file. Gbxml is the most widely used format for transferring data between BIM and BEM tools. The gbxml file is then uploaded to the GBS web service, where the simulation is run to predict the building energy performance.
• Analyze: With the analysis result from GBS web service, user can then analyze and adjust the design toward optimizing energy efficiency.

GBS API allows you to automate the analysis workflow and incorporate its analysis functions and results with your software. GBS API creates an opportunity for independent software developers to sell services customizing Green Building Studio to specific customer needs. It also enables architects and engineers to streamline the energy performance analysis process on their building.

GBS API operates on three primary resources:

Project: Represents a project in GBS web service. Project is usually specified with its location and building type. Run: Represents a gbxml model with other simulation inputs Run Result: Represents simulation or energy prediction result of a run.

To learn more about the workflow and use cases of project, run, and run result, please visit GBS wiki help page. Currently, GBS API supports basic create, update, and read operations on these resources. For example, project API can be used to create, and delete a project in GBS. Run API can be used to create a run and retrieve the run result.

The calling style of GBS API is REST. The term REST is short for “Representational State Transfer”. It is a style of software architecture that provides a convenient and consistent approach to requesting and modifying resources in the web service environment. You can learn more about REST and its tutorial in this website. In the context of GBS API, it refers to using HTTP verbs to retrieve and modify representations of resources stored in GBS web service. In this case, resources are stored in GBS web service; a client sends a request that the server perform a particular action (such as create a project), and the server performs the actions and sends a response, often in the form of a representation of the specified resource. I will have a follow up post in a few days to provide a real world use case on how to use GBS API.

If you are an active Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) member, you can download GBS API SDK directly from ADN website (Autodesk ADN access is required to get access to this site and download the SDK).

Are you interested in using our API? Are you a developer who is interested in providing building performance analysis solutions that can potentially change this industry? To give us more feedback or to participate in this program, please submit a request with the title “GBS: interested in pilot program” via e-mail to [email protected]. In your email, please provide the following information: 

Company name Main contact person’s name Email address ADN developer ID Brief description of intention After receiving your request, we will contact you with more information.

(Updated) Second post on the GBS API now available with details on how to use the API with a real world example. In the meantime tell us what you think of the idea of an API for GBS – what would you like to use it for?